Mischief in Mudbug (12 page)

“Fine, if you’re going to get all picky and geographical on me. You’re still going to need a key, though. The lock on that door is a deadbolt and doesn’t open from the inside.”

Sabine threw her hands in the air in frustration. “Then what are we even talking about this for? I don’t have the keys and wouldn’t know the first thing about picking a lock.”

“Oh, I can get them.”

Sabine groaned, knowing from the sound of her voice that Helena’s offer would come with strings attached. “Out with it, Helena. What do you want?”

“Well, I just figured that while we were in the records room you might be able to get a copy of my autopsy report.”

Sabine narrowed her eyes. “Is that all?”

“Scout’s honor.” Helena worked up her best sincere look.

Sabine frowned. It sounded so simple. Copy a couple of sheets of paper in exchange for a set of keys. Unfortunately, she already knew that anything involving Helena was never easy or without consequences.

Helena or the Mudbug police. Her two options for solving a crime.

Sabine sighed. “What time should we do this?”

It was two more long hours and after three a.m. before Sabine was transferred to a private room. The entire time, Helena had been champing at the bit—and a bag of beef jerky from the vending machine. Watching the ghost inhale the dried meat, Sabine couldn’t help thinking people should be very, very careful what they wished for.

All her life she’d wanted to see a ghost, and she’d gotten Helena.

All her life she’d wanted to find her family, and now it looked like it might have been better—and safer—if she hadn’t.

All her life she’d wanted to find “the” guy. The guy who made her heart skip a beat, who made her skin tingle with the slightest touch, who made her palms sweat when he looked at her. And in he’d walked, just after she’d been given a potential death sentence by cancer, and a much more probable one by poisoning unless they got a grip, and fast, on what the hell was going on.

Sabine pushed herself out of the wheelchair and slid into her new hospital bed with a sigh. The nurse gave her a critical eye for a couple of seconds, then went about the business of checking her blood pressure for the hundredth time since she’d been brought to the
hospital. She’d been too critical of Maryse, Sabine decided. She’d accused her friend of avoiding life, of avoiding relationships, especially when Luc had come on the scene. It wasn’t like her accusations were untrue, but now that Sabine found herself in a frighteningly similar position—her world upside down, everything she’d known as fact now in question, her life in danger, and a veritable Adonis just waiting for the word—she regretted having ever pushed her friend.

The overload to her emotional and mental systems was staggering, and although she’d thought it was as high as possible, Sabine’s respect for Maryse shot up even another notch. As soon as she saw her friend, she was going to give her a huge hug, a high five, and an apology. Then she was going to demand her secret. How the hell had she handled all this pressure without exploding?

The nurse removed the cuff and made some notes on her file. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Try to get some sleep.” She pulled the covers up on the bed, flipped out the lights, and left the room.

“Thanffkt Godfft,” Helena said, her mouth full of jerky. She paused for a minute and swallowed. “I thought she’d never leave. Are you ready?”

“No, but that’s totally irrelevant, isn’t it? Do you have the key?”

Helena nodded. “Swiped it from the front desk.” She tugged at the key ring wedged in the front pocket of her entirely too-tight blue jeans and finally managed to wrench it loose while pushing up the bottom of her spandex tank top by two inches and at least three stomach rolls. “I should probably change into something loose and comfortable for the mission, right?”

“You should probably change into something loose and comfortable because I can
see
you.”

Helena glared at Sabine. “You skinny broads are all the same. You don’t think fat people should dress fashionably.”

“No. I don’t think fat people should show their fat. There are plenty of fashionable tops that don’t let your stomach hang out.”

Helena stuck out her tongue, complete with partially-chewed jerky. “Anorexic.”

“Glutton.”

Helena grinned. “You got me there, but damn, do you realize I’ve eaten over six thousand calories a day for the past week and haven’t gained a pound? How many people get that opportunity?”

“You could also jump off the roof of the hospital and not die, but I don’t see you racing up the stairs to try that.”

“Where the hell’s the fun in that? I’m just doing things I would have liked to do while I was alive. I don’t recall ever wanting to jump off a building, although I would have probably pushed a person or two.” Helena frowned for a moment, and then her face brightened. “Hey, what do you think the odds are I could find a way to have sex? I didn’t do hardly any of that while I was alive. And now I wouldn’t have to worry about getting one of those CDs or anything.”

Sabine closed her eyes and counted to five. “STDs, and no, I am not about to start an escort service for the dead. It would be fraught with misery and no profit at all.” Sabine went to the door and peeked outside. “It’s clear. Let’s just get this over with.”

She stepped out into the hall, and a second later Hel
ena strolled through the wall to join her. Sabine took one look at the ghost’s new wardrobe creation and almost choked. Helena glared and went off down the hall, the full nun’s habit she wore giving her the appearance of gliding. Sabine stared after her in dismay. The fat rolls were covered, sure, but somewhere in the heavens, Jesus was surely crying.

Sabine made the sign of the cross and followed Helena down the hall.

Since Sabine had been placed on the second floor, they opted for the stairs over the elevator, figuring it was the safest option to avoid detection. At the end of the hall, Helena motioned for Sabine to stop while she stepped around. “It’s clear,” Helena said and waved her on. “The records room is at the end of this hall. I hope this time goes better than last.”

Sabine’s mind raced with arguments against what she was about to do, but her feet continued to move, one in front of the other, until finally she was at the end of the hall, standing behind the largest penguin she’d ever seen and watching her struggle with the ancient lock.

“Finally,” Helena said when the lock turned at last. She pushed the door open and slipped inside, Sabine close behind. “The Dead records are on the last row. Guess that’s sorta fitting. All the living assholes are on the first three. You start there and get some dirt on the Fortescues. I’m going to find my autopsy report.”

Sabine cringed.
Dead records.
That was rude.

Sabine slipped to the front row and looked down the rows of shelves until she’d located the F’s. Field…Fontaine…Fox. She looked beyond Fox but the Fu’s
had started. She looked more closely, pulled each file out a little from the shelf. At the spot where the Fortescues’ files should have been, assuming there were any at this hospital, there was a single sheet of bright orange paper. Sabine pulled the paper from the shelf and saw that it contained a list of every member of the Fortescue family, alive and dead, and some she’d never heard of. Cousins, she supposed.

But where were the records? There must have been files at some time. Otherwise, why have a sheet of paper marking this spot? Sabine could understand medical personnel pulling a single file in order to treat a patient, but an entire family? That was just weird.

A sudden thought flashed through her mind and she moved to the next row. Landry…Lattimer…LeVeche. She pulled her file from the stack and opened it. She frowned at the results of her biopsy, but as she flipped through the file, everything seemed in order. Maybe the Fortescue files had been checked out for review.

She stepped over to the medical records manager’s desk and went through the files stacked on top. Nothing. She was just about to give up when she saw a sliver of orange peeking out from under a stack of paper in the In box. Sabine pulled the orange paper from the box and began to read, her heart beating faster as she read. It was an inventory of files stolen during the hospital break-in. There were a bunch of names on the list, but the ones that stood out to Sabine all ended in Fortescue. Everyone in Mudbug had assumed it was junkies that had broken into the hospital; only Sabine didn’t see any drugs on the list of missing items. Just medical records.

It wasn’t possible. The hospital break-in happened before she knew about the Fortescues, before Beau knew, before he’d even been hired. Something was very, very wrong with all of this. It couldn’t possibly be random.

“Hey.” Helena’s voice caused her to jump. “I need your help here.” Helena shoved a file in Sabine’s face. “The autopsy report is there, but I don’t understand all that medical mumbo jumbo. Can you take a look and jot down the important things? That way if you don’t understand it either, we’ll have something to show to Maryse.”

Sabine nodded, trying to get a grip on the situation. The last thing she wanted to do was let Helena in on more than she already knew. And Sabine needed to make some sense of everything before she could formulate an opinion, much less a plan. She took the file from Helena and sat down at the desk, pulling a legal pad and pen toward her.

She read the first line of the autopsy report and sucked in a breath.

“What’s wrong?” Helena asked. “What does it say? I don’t understand, Sabine. What killed me?”

Sabine continued to read down on the report, growing more surprised with every word. “I’ve got to write this down. Maryse will understand it better than I do.”

Helena stared at her. “But you know something. I saw that look on your face. There’s something in that file you didn’t expect to see. Why won’t you tell me what it is?”

Sabine shook her head and wrote furiously. “I can’t be sure. I think I’m confusing my terminology and I don’t want to tell you the wrong thing. Let’s just
get it all down and talk to Maryse. Okay?” Helena didn’t look the least bit convinced, but she didn’t argue either.

Sabine continued to write, word for word, everything in the report. Maybe by the time she talked to Maryse she’d have come up with a way to tell Helena that the autopsy had found no sign of foul play.

And that Helena had been dying of cancer.

Sabine stood at the hospital room window. The sun was just beginning to rise, casting an orange glow over the marsh. She’d barely slept, only managing ten-minute increments, and was positive she looked as bad as she felt. The nurse had already been in to check on her and promised to bring breakfast in directly. Sabine could hardly wait. Hospital food was so tasty. She’d just decided that a shower might not be a bad idea when Helena came huffing into the room, still wearing the habit, and threw a stack of files behind a recliner in the corner. Before Sabine could get a word out of her mouth, the nurse bustled in with Sabine’s breakfast. Sabine glanced over at Helena, who’d collapsed in the recliner wheezing like she’d just run the New York marathon, and tried not to even think about what Helena had tossed behind the chair.

Sabine excused herself to the bathroom, hoping it would hurry the cheerful, chatty nurse along. It probably took all of a minute before she heard the door close, but it felt like hours. Sabine stepped out of the bathroom to find Helena sitting up in her bed, a half-eaten pancake dangling from the plastic fork.

“You know,” Helena said as she shoved the other half of the pancake in her mouth. “Hospital food isn’t
near as bad as I remember.” She stabbed a half-cooked sausage with the fork and wolfed it down.

“You have a serious problem. This is just so not normal.”

Helena rolled her eyes and poked at the scrambled eggs. It lifted in one big blob. “The fake psychic is telling me this isn’t normal. Hell, you think I hadn’t already figured that out?”

“I don’t mean this as in everything, I mean this”—she pointed to the empty plate—“is not normal. Dead people do not need to eat. Dead people shouldn’t even want to eat. Ghosts should not develop addictions, Helena.”

Helena gulped down the coffee, then belched. “Guess ghosts shouldn’t lose their manners either, huh? But what the hell. You’re the only one who can hear me.”

Sabine closed her eyes and counted to ten, trying to keep herself from wishing that she or Maryse had strangled Helena when she was alive. At least then they could have said they deserved having Helena haunt them from beyond.

Sabine peeked behind the recliner. Just as she’d feared, there was a stack of files that look suspiciously like those she’d seen in the records room the night before. “What did you do, Helena?”

Helena, who had been licking residual syrup off the breakfast plate, placed the now spotless plastic dish on the table. “Just some files I thought we’d need.” She swirled her finger around the inside of the coffee cup, then licked it.

Sabine felt her jaw clench involuntarily. “What files? Damn it, Helena! I wrote down everything we needed last night. Why would you take more? They’ll send me
to jail if they find those files in here. What were you thinking? And why aren’t you saying anything?”

The ghost had gone strangely silent and it took a second for Sabine to realize that she was glancing at the doorway. Sabine whirled around, fully expecting to find the chatty nurse calling for a straitjacket and police backup, and let out a breath of relief when she saw Raissa standing in the doorway, a curious expression on her face.

“Raissa, thank God!” Sabine collapsed into the recliner, what little was remaining of her energy completely drained. “I thought for sure I was on my way to a padded room or jail, whichever one had available space. What are you doing here?”

Raissa stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “Maryse called me. She got held up at the airport in Houston and thought you might need to hear a voice of reason since Mildred called yelling at her twice last night.”

“Mildred yelled at Maryse?” Sabine stared at Raissa. “What in the world for?”

Raissa smiled. “Apparently this attempt on your life is all Maryse’s fault because she went and tried to get killed first and you always want to do everything Maryse does.”

Sabine groaned. “I wanted to do everything Maryse did in second grade. I haven’t wanted to since. Well, except that one time I saw Luc walk out of the shower wearing nothing but a towel. I have to admit that Maryse definitely got that one right.”

Raissa laughed. “I confess to a lingering bit of jealousy myself. Not only is the man hot, but he’s so obviously over the moon for Maryse. Makes you want one of your own.”

“Only for a moment. Once they put their clothes on, then there’s bills to pay and work to do and in-laws to deal with, and we all know how that in-law thing worked out for Maryse the first time.” Sabine glared at Helena.

Raissa followed Sabine’s gaze and studied the hospital bed. “I take it the ghost is here? Either that or you are on some really good drugs and your bed is incredibly lumpy.”

“Oh yeah,” Sabine said. “She’s here in all her glory—every should-be-expanding pound of her.”